Today is the 18th annual World Refugee Day. The United Nations Refugee Agency sponsors this day recognizing and raising awareness about the world’s obligation to welcome and shelter refugees—those forced to flee violence or disaster in their home land. Unfortunately the Trump Administration is hostile to our obligations to harbor refugees.

ABC News reports, “At least 10 Democratic senators and members of Congress have called on Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to resign, as of Tuesday morning, after the embattled agency chief blamed Congress, not the Trump administration, for the separation of children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.” We also demand that Nielsen resign. If you agree, click here to tell your Senators and Congress member to demand that the DHS Secretary resign.

On 4 December 2000, the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 55/76 decided that, from 2001, 20 June would be celebrated as World Refugee Day. In this resolution, the General Assembly noted that 2001 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, (see Wikipedia).

In violation of our legal obligations and all ethical norms, Trump’s brutal policies are separating and traumatizing families. As we reported yesterday, ICE agents are seizing children from asylum seekers in this monstrous policy. Children are being warehoused in tents in the Texas heat, and isolated from their parents and siblings. Click here to Tell Congress to Abolish ICE, and to demand an end to the ruthless, abusive, so-called zero-tolerance policies at the border.

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